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Sunday, April 16, 2017

Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Pattern Blocks are popular math manipulatives that seem to have been around forever (at least they were around when I started teaching math 25 years ago.) The standard set includes:

Yellow hexagons

Red trapezoids

Blue thick rhombi

Tan thin rhombi

Green triangles

Orange squares

There are loads of fun learning activities that can be done with pattern blocks, including exploration of symmetry, fractions, tessellations, angles, and more. Pattern blocks can also be used outside of math for creativity, art, writing, and such.

As useful as pattern blocks are, the physical versions have a few drawbacks:

They cost money to buy.

You will always have a limited amount.

They can get lost.

One alternative is to use digital pattern blocks. Although there is nothing quite like handling the plastic blocks in real life, students can still do loads of activities with the virtual version.

To help with this, I have created a free Google Drawings template with virtual pattern blocks. In addition to the blank template, I have also made several sample activities to show some ideas for how these could be used. See below to get more details and to get your own copies of all these resources.

The Basic Pattern Block Template

The basic Pattern Block template is a Google Drawing with a blank canvas and one of each of the Pattern Blocks off to the left side of the canvas. Each of the six Pattern Block shapes and colors are accurately recreated in the template. The Pattern Blocks can be copied, pasted, moved, rotated, and flipped however you want for your learning activities.

To get your own copy of the basic Pattern Block template, click the link below.

As mentioned above you can copy and paste the Pattern Block shapes for your activity. Google Drawings also provides many options for you to move, rotate, and flip the Pattern Blocks as needed. You can use your mouse, or your keyboard, or even a combination of both to manipulate the shapes as needed. See below for a full list of the options.

You can use the basic Pattern Block template to create all sorts of learning activities. As an example, I have created several activities shown below. For each activity I have also included a template that you are free to copy and use if you want.

Pattern Blocks are a tool that can be used for many creative and learning activities. With a quick Google search you can find loads of activities using physical pattern blocks that you can easily adapt to this virtual Google Drawings template. Or you can create your own projects. If you do, please feel free to share how you used this template to engage your students in learning.

Very interesting. I never realised you could use alt/shift plus left and right arrows to rotate a line through one degree. This is really useful when it comes to using Google Drawings to teach geometry. Is this documented? If so, where? Or did you just discover this feature?